Bright-Sided: How Positive Thinking Is Undermining America

Bright-Sided: How Positive Thinking Is Undermining AmericaBarbara Ehrenreich's New York Times bestselling Bright sided is a sharp witted knockdown of America's love affair with positive thinking and an urgent call for a new commitment to realism Americans are a positive people cheerful, optimistic, and upbeat: This is our reputation as well as our self image. But more than a temperament, being positive is the key to getting success and prosperity. Or so we are told. In this utterly original debunking,

Barbara Ehrenreich's New York Times bestselling Bright-sided is a sharp-witted knockdown of America's love affair with positive thinking and an urgent call for a new commitment to realism

Americans are a positive people -- cheerful, optimistic, and upbeat: This is our reputation as well as our self-image. But more than a temperament, being positive is the key to getting success and prosperity. Or so we are told.

In this utterly original debunking, Barbara Ehrenreich confronts the false promises of positive thinking and shows its reach into every corner of American life, from Evangelical megachurches to the medical establishment, and, worst of all, to the business community, where the refusal to consider negative outcomes--like mortgage defaults--contributed directly to the current economic disaster. With the myth-busting powers for which she is acclaimed, Ehrenreich exposes the downside of positive thinking: personal self-blame and national denial. This is Ehrenreich at her provocative best--poking holes in conventional wisdom and faux science and ending with a call for existential clarity and courage.

Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Picador USA
Published: 08/03/2010
ISBN: 9780312658854
Pages: 235
Weight: 0.52lbs
Size: 8.50h x 5.50w x 0.80d

Review Citations: New York Times Book Review 08/15/2010 pg. 20
Entertainment Weekly 09/17/2010 pg. 142